PEN America Blog

"Y-land had no marriage system but was famous for its prosperous sex industry. Even bartering was allowed: when the male clients could not afford to pay, they could obtain sexual services by trading their body parts."

The pirate is the child of the man. The child of the man tells a tale. The tale entails counting. Counting relies on natural numbers. Natural numbers do not include pi nor can they represent its value. The pirate does not know the value of pi.

Irina Balakhonova, founder of the Samokat Publishing House and a pioneer in publishing works on gay themes in defiance of Russia’s homophobic laws and culture, was chosen as the 2015 recipient of the Jeri Laber International Freedom to Publish Award.

Sharing Stories from the Bronx

On 21 March 2015, while people across the globe celebrate World Poetry Day, PEN will be directing public attention to the imprisonment, murder, and general harassment of poets, writers, and journalists around the world.

"The attempt to destroy ideas is almost always futile, so censorship ultimately becomes less about controlling the ideas of the text, and more about performing a public act of symbolic social repression."